Digitas launches brand content platform

Digital marketing agency Digitas has launched The Third Act, a new brand content unit.

The new unit, designed to assist clients with the creation and distribution of digital content, is headquartered in New York.

“We're creating and producing audio and video for all types of interactive advertising,” said Stephanie Sarofian, SVP, managing director of The Third Act. The new unit will work with its own clients and will also support Digitas clients across the globe, as well as other Publicis Groupe agencies.

Paris-based Publicis Groupe is the parent company of Digitas as well as hundreds of other agencies in 104 countries around the world.

“We understood that the digital lifestyle was shifting in terms of the way we needed to go to market for brands,” Sarofian said. The goal was to form a unit that would create “purposeful and useful” content to help brands become part of the dialogue, she said.

Although The Third Act officially launched this week, it has been in business for the past 18 months or so, Sarofian said. “We've got 20-25 people that work with us right now and a huge vast network of external partners,” she said. “We are made up of a ratio of freelancers and full-time folks purposely because we wanted to keep this fluid and very liquid in terms of being able to partner and bring in emerging talent.”

One of the clients the unit is working with is InterContinental Hotels. The Third Act is currently working on the “second season” of the Holiday Inn Express' The Smart Show, a cross-country Web program, Sarofian said.